Designing and setting up of a perching vehicle test facility

Abstract

The notion of perching micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) has drawn tremendous interest in the research community. Tremendous potential lies in a perching MAV as a platform for long endurance surveillance by maintaining a low powered perch state.

In this final year project, the author was tasked to set up a test facility within NTU for the development and rapid prototyping of perching aircraft designs based on an optical motion capture system developed by Vicon. This report details the design approach taken to set up the facility and highlights some of the key technologies used in order to develop the facility into an autonomous platform for perching flight tests. Performance analysis with an unpowered fixed wing aircraft was then conducted for the facility’s various components and some of the key limitations were highlighted. Sample data obtained from the numerous flight tests was also shown in this report before demonstrating how the data was used to derive the aerodynamic model of the fixed wing aircraft at high angles of attack. Finally, the report concludes by highlighting some of the milestones of the project and possible future work.